Brainy Pleasures

Above: Matthew Ao presenting the plan to East Lansing's City Council.

A new type of gaming business will be opening downtown in the coming weeks: escape rooms. The for-profit business known as “ESC The Room” will be located in the basement of 301 M.A.C. Avenue (the northwest corner of M.A.C. Avenue and Albert Street).

Photo credit: Zachary D. Blount.

Ever wonder about those big numbers posted in a window in that tall building on the east side of Farm Lane, across from the entrance to the MSU Dairy Store?

Right now, the digits read 63000. That’s the number of generations in an experiment that’s been running in my lab for over a quarter century.

Image: A hawk (probably sharp-shinned) in MSU’s Beal Gardens earlier this year.

Simply put, East Lansing birds, like the one shown above, breathe differently from East Lansing reptiles and mammals, including this author.

A reader asks: What’s up with all the posters on trees in front of the East Lansing Public Library?

Eli answers: The “posters” are actually poems, part of the most recent Poetry Attack executed by members of The East Lansing Street Arts Commission (ELSAC).

Eli spoke with Carolyn White, a founder of both ELSAC and East Lansing’s Poetry Attacks. White is a professional story teller, the world’s foremost expert on leprechauns, and a children’s book author.

Almost 100 years ago, a man won a Nobel Prize for his discoveries, explaining the nature of space and time. He developed a theory of relativity that would come to be the foundation for modern physics. Mr. Einstein claimed, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

This weekend, explore your own curiosities and unearth the complexities of our vast universe at Michigan State’s 3rd annual Science Festival.

Image, courtesy of NASA: City lights are at the horizon on the left, zodiacal light is the faint, white light that starts in the center and angles up and left, while the light of the Milky Way starts in the center and angles up and right. 

In the astronomical spring days, about an hour before dawn, the observant East Lansing resident has a shot at seeing zodiacal light in the east.

Some people love the live action of live theatre performances, and others like watching a favorite film on the big screen. But what happens when you combine both? MSU’s Theatre2Film Project is combining these experiences, and is excited to see where it takes them.

Image: The author's coast redwood. The leaves are very similar to those of the dawn redwood, but there is a key distinction: the leaves of the coast redwood alternate on each side of the stem while the dawn redwood leaves grow exactly opposite each other on the stem.

Image: Another Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) as photographed by Dan Burbank from the International Space Station in 2011; courtesy of NASA.

Last week ELi on Earth (EoE) focused its binoculars on the moons of Jupiter, and this week we will point our binoculars to comet Lovejoy.. The comet is bright enough to be seen with binoculars in East Lansing, or even with the naked eye if you are in a darker area.